Italy: Confindustria presented its national collective bargaining model to the trade unions
A three-year national collective agreement, more weight to the company level and a seven-month "union peace" during the bargaining for the renewal: these are the main elements of the reform of the...
Great Britain: lackluster evaluation of the TUC annual conference
Over 700 unionists met in Brighton on September 8-11, 2008 for the 140th TUC annual conference. The different bills announced by the Brown government's Ministers, who followed each other at the...
Spain: the government goes easy on the minimum wage increase
Pedro Solbes, Minister for Economic Affairs, announced that minimum interprofessional wages (SMI) would "increase slower than anticipated with different economic circumstances". The trade unions...
Companies: benefits and disadvantages of EWCs
After analyzing the direct and indirect costs of a EWC (see our dispatch No. 080674), the study carried out by the GHK Consulting Firm at the request of the European Commission as part of the...
Germany : IG-Metall about to publish a list of « black sheep » among temp agencies
Confronted with the upsurge of temp employees paid less than the permanent workforce, the Frankfurt section of IG-Metall (which covers four Länder- Hesse, Rheinland-Palatinate, Sarre and...
Companies : actual costs of EWCs
Is it possible to give an accurate evaluation of the costs of a European Works Council ? The European Commission asked the GHK Consulting Firm to carry out a study on this topic in view of the...
Spain: target 1.000 euros a month
The Spanish unions set as their objective, during the pending collective negotiations, that all employees receive 1.000 euros a month minimum. (Ref. 080673)
HP: European trade unions demand re-skilling as an alternative to redundancies
Gathered on September 8 by the Union Network International (UNI) and by the European Metalworkers' federation (EMF), the trade unions of HewlettPackard (HP) expressed concern about the social...
Fiat: unions demand an international framework agreement
Italian metalworkers' unions - Fim-Cisl, Fiom-CGIL and Uilm -, the International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF) and the union representatives of Fiat's Italian, Polish, Serbian, Turkish and...
Brazil: thousands of workers on strike in the car industry
Wage negotiations with car manufacturers are stuck in several Brazilian regions. In the south, 8.500 workers came out on strike last week and Sao Paulo's plants - the country's largest...
Great Britain: TUC report shows workers are dissatisfied
Pay in line with the cost of living, less stress and reduced working hours : these are workers' main claims, according to a report published by the Trade Union Confederation TUC on September 1...
Germany: after the agreement on gradual early retirement, the IG Metall demands a 7% wage increase minimum
After months of conflict and on the eve of the beginning of the wage negotiations for the 3.6 million employees of the sector, the Social Partners of the metal and electronics sectors reached an...
Great Britain: the communication workers union takes over TV
This is an unseen event: the first union channel was launched on July 31, 2008. The idea came from the Communication Workers Union (CWU) which is trying to appeal to young workers by exposing on...
Finland: the construction site of the EPR atomic reactor threatened by a strike
After some irregularities at a subcontractor of the Bouygues Company, the Finnish union of building workers is threatening to launch a strike on the construction site of the EPR atomic reactor...
BNP-Paribas: amendment to the EWC agreement
The management of the French bank BNP-Paribas (169.000 employees throughout the world, 130.000 of them in Europe) and the members of its European Works Council bargained for an amendment to the...
Hungary: unions feel that the government gives insufficient representation for workers’ interests in the new bipartite forum on economic matters
Union concerns. The Governmental Decree [1054/2008. (VIII. 4.)] setting out the competences of GEF explicitly states that the establishment of the forum does not concern the activities of the...
Most viewed articles of the month on mind HR
What readers clicked on the most last month.
What readers clicked on the most last month.
1
Oliver Dietrich (IG Metall): “The advent of AI can be a means of deepening social partnership within companies”
In Germany, trade unions want to influence how AI is deployed in companies. Oliver Dietrich is an AI project manager at the regional office of the IG Metall trade union in North Rhine-Westphalia...
2
EU: social partners split over competitiveness and action on job quality
The European Trade Union Confederation and BusinessEurope have published their response to the consultation document on the European Commission's upcoming EU quality jobs initiative. The two...
4 February 2026
3
Germany: collective bargaining negotiations begin in chemical industry
Collective bargaining talks in Germany’s chemical and pharmaceutical industries are due to open this week, covering nearly 580,000 employees across around 1,700 companies. With the sector facing...
3 February 2026
4
Italy: new generational renewal agreement penned at UniCredit
The agreement signed on 30 December by UniCredit, Italy’s second-largest banking group, with the Fabi, First-Cisl, Fisac-Cgil, Uilca and Unisin trade unions aims to continue generational...
5
France: social partner talks extend far beyond contractual terminations
After a false start on 3 December, French social partners resumed talks on 7 January 2026 on potential changes to the unemployment insurance agreement, including the rules governing compensation...
12 January 2026
6
EU: banking sector social partners commit to combating violence and harassment
On 15 January, the trade union federation UNI Europa Finance and three employers’ associations in the banking sector signed a joint statement on preventing violence and harassment in the...